Financial Freedom: Time for Reflections

I had an interesting reminder this weekend about why we should at times pause and reflect on our motivations for pursuing financial freedom.

Outreach in Batam
I was in Batam over the weekend for a one-day trip organised by my church to do outreach to two villages over there. Our role was to organise games and activities as well as to lead songs for the village children. The villages were quite poor. Their homes were made of thin cement and board while zinc roofs provided the protection against the elements. The pavements were dirt paths that became very muddy whenever it rains.

However, despite the relative poverty, the children were happy to see us, to get involved in the group games that we organised and sung heartily along with us to the bahasa Indonesian songs that we selected. Their happiness showed through even when some of them did not have shoes or slippers and their clothes were not the modern togs that children nowadays spot in Singapore.

A time to reflect
In the midst of my quest for financial freedom, I do at times get overly immersed in the world of investments, equities, treasury bills, saving money and making money. I look at my statement of net worth and track what is my year-to-date returns and compare this against the fixed deposits and treasury bills yields as benchmarks. I prepare, plan and plot how I can move myself ever a step nearer to my ultimate goal of being able to choose how to spend the 24 hours given to me without worrying about providing for myself and for my family.

There is nothing wrong in being focussed on achieving financial freedom. But at the end of the day, each one of you has to determine the reason why you are doing all this. Achieving financial freedom so that you can stop working is a decent reason, but it sometimes does not fulfil as much as considering about how you can touch others' lives in more powerful ways should you have the luxury of time that financial freedom gives you when you have achieved it.

Community Service can be satisfying
So far I realise from my own volunteer activities that community service is something that satisfies intrinsically like no other thing can. I have to strike a balance now to spend more time with my family and on growing my investments and passive income so that I can one day decide for myself whether I need a regular job for my paycheck. But as I traverse along this journey, I realise that the ultimate goal, after providing for family's needs (and some wants) is really to touch more lives in whichever ways we can for the better.

You can only eat that many bowls of sharksfin or adorn yourself with that many Rolexes or BMW cars. After a while, we need something more intrinsically satisfying.

Be well and prosper.